There is often a need to arrest or slow a vessel in the water. One example includes a suspected contraband carrying vessel pursued by the coast guard or police. Another example includes watercraft suspected of acts of terrorism. Pirate ships, out of control pleasure watercraft, illegal fishing vessels, and vessels in or about to enter restricted areas are just a few of the many other examples where a watercraft arresting systems would be useful.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,015, incorporated herein by this reference, discloses that attempts to use propeller entanglement lines as a water craft arresting mechanism have failed and proposes instead a net deployed by rockets to snare the watercraft itself. Drag devices attached to the net are intended to slow the vessel once the net covers the vessel.
For bigger vessels, such a net would have to be extremely large. Moreover, the notion of using rockets to deploy the net renders the system complex, difficult to use and expensive.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,417, also incorporated herein by this reference, discloses a net with detonator chord launched into the path of a vessel to damage the watercraft. U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,109, also incorporated herein by this reference, discloses a net deployed in a path of a munition such as a torpedo to entangle it. How such as a net is deployed is not described in detail.
The inventors hereof have discovered that a net in a single panel configuration is difficult to deploy accurately and quickly, does not typically stay in the expanded configuration once in the water, and does not reliably arrest watercraft.